"How did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez change the public debate from one in which it was unacceptable to even mention the idea of raising taxes on anybody, let alone the rich, to one in which 85% of the American public agreed with her proposals to tax the wealthy?"
Where in the world did this premise come from? Virtually every Democrat left of Manchin has called for taxing the wealthy to pay for benefits?
When she said this back in February of 2019, she was hit with several solid weeks of attacks, including from people like Bill Gates. Since then, many others have joined in. I'm sure there were others before her, but I haven't been able to find any examples of prominent politicians taking such a public stand. If you find some, please let me know so I can update my reference!
Ah ok. You're going back to 2019. My fault. Was assuming that you were talking about something more recent.
Anyway, I think I probably agree with you that it's good to engage in arguments and debate where folks generally agree with you and taxes on the rich are one of those areas. And your point about not backing down when some controversy emerges is also right on.
Having said that, looking at news reports on AOC's proposal, I'm not sure it's accurate to describe the reaction to AOC's proposal as 2 year old 's temper tantrum. And it's also good to get the policy right.
If you look at Bill Gate's reaction (https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/12/18220756/bill-gates-tax-rate-70-percent-marginal-modern-monetary-theory), for example, he was actually strongly supportive of the idea of raising taxes; his point was just that we should be focused on taxing wealth as well as income. So that was pretty clearly a disagreement about tactics rather than an "attack". I suppose you could describe his description of MMT's perspective on inflation as an attack (since he describes it as "crazy"), but I also think that events have proven his description there as on target.
"How did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez change the public debate from one in which it was unacceptable to even mention the idea of raising taxes on anybody, let alone the rich, to one in which 85% of the American public agreed with her proposals to tax the wealthy?"
Where in the world did this premise come from? Virtually every Democrat left of Manchin has called for taxing the wealthy to pay for benefits?
When she said this back in February of 2019, she was hit with several solid weeks of attacks, including from people like Bill Gates. Since then, many others have joined in. I'm sure there were others before her, but I haven't been able to find any examples of prominent politicians taking such a public stand. If you find some, please let me know so I can update my reference!
Ah ok. You're going back to 2019. My fault. Was assuming that you were talking about something more recent.
Anyway, I think I probably agree with you that it's good to engage in arguments and debate where folks generally agree with you and taxes on the rich are one of those areas. And your point about not backing down when some controversy emerges is also right on.
Having said that, looking at news reports on AOC's proposal, I'm not sure it's accurate to describe the reaction to AOC's proposal as 2 year old 's temper tantrum. And it's also good to get the policy right.
If you look at Bill Gate's reaction (https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/12/18220756/bill-gates-tax-rate-70-percent-marginal-modern-monetary-theory), for example, he was actually strongly supportive of the idea of raising taxes; his point was just that we should be focused on taxing wealth as well as income. So that was pretty clearly a disagreement about tactics rather than an "attack". I suppose you could describe his description of MMT's perspective on inflation as an attack (since he describes it as "crazy"), but I also think that events have proven his description there as on target.